With over 1,000 attendees, this conference, now in its 30th year, is one of the largest in the Midwest. I was honored to have been selected to facilitate a panel discussion on “Recruiting innovation and how you need to rethink your recruitment strategy to recruit innovative talent.” Thanks goes to my esteemed group of corporate panelists who offered three uniquely different perspectives: Charles Lilly of UBS represented the corporate employer perspective, Kristy Nittskoff of Talent-Savvy offered an employment branding consultant perspective and Mike Temkin of Shaker Advertising offered a recruitment communications and advertising strategy perspective.
Our session was attended by over 60 people, many with questions about balancing innovation with compliance as well as getting buy-in to new practices by building a business case for change. Kristy commented on the importance of understanding your employment value proposition and ensuring that employees are able to share that message in a consistent manner when trying to recruit and engage top, innovative talent. Charles highlighted his successes moving his old line, decentralized financial services organization to a more centralized C.O. E. model for recruitment support, technology and strategies. This enabled him to test new practices with receptive hiring managers, and then expand the adoption of a new technology or strategy by promoting successes internally. Mike shared numerous examples of how his firm has been able to help employers take a more holistic approach to their recruitment advertising strategy by creating an integrated campaign that leverages multiple advertising mediums, pay-per-click online advertising and job postings to drive quality active and passive talent to employer jobs. In targeting talent that has innovation as part of its DNA, my panelists agreed that training hiring managers and holding them accountable for hiring talent that is DIFFERENT than past hires is imperative.
Unfortunately, conflicting schedules did not allow time to attend other sessions. However, the top themes addressed were related to the following topics:
- Developing innovative ways of reaching diverse talent pools using the latest technologies
- Conducting effective employment opportunity and branding communications outreach
- Ensuring efficient tracking and compliance as well as measure success
About the Author
Carl Kutsmode has over 20 years expertise in talent acquisition transformation — assessing and optimizing corporate recruiting capabilities for greater efficiency and performance.